I found that Adblock Plus even stops the commercials from playing on Pandora.
I felt guilty and turned it off. If I could financially harm the record
companies instead of Pandora, I'd definitely keep it on.

This week's featured Bottom Feeders are a motley gang of scammers, hucksters,
and paranoid lunatics who think that smart meters are harmful, or want to
make people think that smart meters are harmful, some of whom are selling
cute little "shields" for US$100 or more.

Evidently I now work for the power company, or so I've been told, because
I had the audacity to point out that the RF emitted by a smart meter is miniscule
compared to the mobile devices and wifi devices they keep close to their rapidly
disintegrating brains every day.

One particular mendicant even swore to "bury" me. I know he was serious
because he posted in all-boldface and all-caps. One does not post in that
way unless one is absolutely serious.

I fell down the stairs and there are bones protruding from my skin ... should I go to the hospital?

Pearl Wilson, Doctor's Assistant

How long have you been dealing with the skin issue? Have you noticed any major changes in your overall skin or nails recently?

You

yes, after a recent bath in hydrochloric acid, my skin all fell off

Pearl Wilson, Doctor's Assistant

Anything else in your medical history you think the doctor should know?

You

I have been smoking crack for decades

Pearl Wilson, Doctor's Assistant

OK. Got it. I'm sending you to a secure page on JustAnswer so you can place the $5 fully-refundable deposit now. While you're filling out that form, I'll tell the Doctor about your situation and then connect you two. Continue >>

So I heard that Facebook now auto-detects when it thinks you are suicidal,
and takes "appropriate measures."

Perhaps today it only encourages you to talk to your friends about it, but
for a company that does everything it can to slurp as much of your life as
possible, and who are known to employ psychologists to tune the experience
to make you want to keep coming back to see "what he/she said" next... This
is totally a slippery slope.

Knowing that someone is suicidal and not doing anything about it is, potentially,
criminally negligent. Facebook just made itself the de-facto arbiter of everyone's
psychological well being. Considering that there are people who want, for
example, to tie mandatory psychological evaluation to things like gun ownership,
this seems like a high speed trip into very dangerous territory.

This is not funny. People should not kill themselves; they should kill Mark
Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Another former Facebook executive has spoken out about the harm the social network is doing to civil society around the world. Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business, before recommending people take a “hard break” from Facebook.

Palihapitiya’s criticisms were aimed squarely at Facebook. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “likes” rather than “civil discourse, cooperation”; a culture of “misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem — this is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem.”

He went on to describe an incident in India where hoax messages about kidnappings led to the lynching of seven innocent people. “That’s what we’re dealing with,” said Palihapitiya. “And imagine taking that to the extreme, where bad actors can now manipulate large swathes of people to do anything you want. It’s just a really, really bad state of affairs.” He says he tries to use Facebook as little as possible, and that his children “aren’t allowed to use that shit.” He later adds, though, that he believes the company “overwhelmingly does good in the world.”

Palihapitiya’s remarks follow similar statements of contrition from others who helped build Facebook into the powerful corporation it is today. In November, early investor Sean Parker said he has become a “conscientious objector” to Facebook, and that Facebook had succeeded by “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” A former product manager at the company, Antonio Garcia-Martinez, has said Facebook lies about its ability to influence individuals based on the data it collects on them, and wrote a book, "Chaos Monkeys", about his work at the firm.

In his talk, Palihapitiya criticized Facebook and its Silicon Valley system of venture capital funding. He said that investors pump money into “shitty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.

Palihapitiya also notes that although tech investors seem almighty, they’ve achieved their power more through luck than skill. “Everybody’s bullshitting,” he said. “If you’re in a seat, and you have good deal flow, and you have precious capital, and there’s a massive tailwind of technological change ... Over time you get one of the 20 [companies that become successful] and you look like a genius. And nobody wants to admit that but that’s the fucking truth.”

Similarly, you see musicians of far less competence than the ones making
a lot of money. One of these described my background in music as being for
losers. Such an arrogant prick, from a band I never really listened to, anyway,
as I thought their music was too trite.

But, yeah, same thing in tech. You can be an amazing software engineer,
but if you can't work on a product that starts to get any grip, you aren't
going to shine in any recognizable way.

If you block *all* of Facebook's domains in your computer's hosts file, and
also install DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, the vast majority of the annoying
ads go away, even on sites which don't normally work unless you disable your
ad blocker.

One obvious side effect, of course, is that Facebook itself doesn't work,
but "that's not a bug, it's a feature."